She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [51]
To the guests, Celeste bragged that just the flowers— fresh-cut centerpieces—cost her $5,000. Music filled the room, the bartender poured liberally, and male dancers in G-strings gave the embarrassed twins lap dances. Steve’s former secretary, Lisa, was there that night. “Steve didn’t want to come,” Celeste told her. Nuzzling Jimmy, she added, “Isn’t he cute? I don’t know why I ever divorced him.”
Later the teens would say Steve hadn’t known about the party and that they were ordered not to tell him. On that day in the family planner, the one Steve had access to, Celeste had written: “Girls spending night at Amy’s.” Weeks later, however, Celeste’s double life came into focus. Even if he wanted to, Steve could no longer ignore it. First he discovered $10,000 in bills from the party. It must have stung when he realized his wife hadn’t wanted him there. Then Chuck Fuqua called from Bank of America. Steve’s account had a $50,000 overdraft. When he investigated, Steve discovered that in a matter of months Celeste had gone through $300,000. When he demanded an explanation, she had no answers.
“I don’t care about the money. I won’t be mad. Just tell me what you did with it. Show me that you got something for the money,” he pleaded.
“I bought stuff,” she said, laughing. “Just stuff.”
Seething, Steve soon discovered something else. Somehow he learned about her affair with Jimmy. Hurt and angry, Steve called Kuperman and again discussed divorce. Friends say he was sick about the turn of his marriage, but determined that it was time for his life with Celeste to end. He said little to the girls about the conflict, except one day, when he and Jennifer took one of their car rides. “Your mother’s upsetting me,” he said.
Days later Kristina walked into the kitchen and found Celeste holding a pistol to her head. “I’m going to kill myself!” she screamed. “You don’t love me, nobody loves me!”
“I love you,” Kristina pleaded, crying. “Jen loves you, Steve loves you. We all do.”
“No, none of you love me,” Celeste insisted.
Terrified, Kristina called 911.
A squad car and an ambulance screeched through the gates at the Gardens of Westlake and pulled up in front of the beautiful house with the man-made stream. Two deputies ran inside followed by EMS workers. They talked calmly to Celeste, asking for the gun. Finally, she handed it to them.
Just then Steve pulled up the long tree-lined driveway and parked off to the side. He rushed toward the house in time to see Celeste put in a squad car and driven away.
Inside, he talked to a deputy who explained what had happened. He comforted Kristina as the deputy wrote down a case number.
“You’ll need this to get your gun back,” he said.
But as soon as the deputy left, Kristina begged him, “Please don’t pick the gun up. Don’t bring it back into the house.”
As she cried and he held her, Steve agreed. Later, Kristina would regret convincing her father to get rid of the gun, which he kept next to his bed.
Meanwhile, Celeste traveled through Austin’s downtown traffic on her way to St. David’s Pavilion, a critical care psychiatric unit. There she’d meet Tracey Tarlton, a smart, intense, and deeply troubled woman. From the first, Tracey felt drawn to the tall blond woman with the deep blue eyes. Later, after it was too late, she’d rethink that day and believe Celeste was already luring her into what would become a deadly dance.
Chapter
7
“The first time I remember seeing Celeste, she was smiling at me,” says Tracey, shaking her head sadly. “It was like instantly there was something between us.”
They may have been drawn together by a similar history, painful childhoods that left scars so deep they could never heal. Or perhaps it was something else Celeste recognized in Tracey that day. Some said Celeste had a talent for understanding the intrinsic traits that